I don't have a roughhousing game that I do with my daughter... I've always felt uncomfortable and out of my territory. I would love to know how to get started though to where I was comfortable and she was comfortable.

My husband and her love to play monkey where she climbs on his shoulders and he tries to knock her down onto the couch or bed while at the same time not trying to bop her head on the door frames. That always brings so much giggles to the family between the both of them.

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Our favorite is a mesh of all sorts of things, we call it tackle. We get down on the floor and it starts with tackling each other, then it often transitions into a try and get past me game, and there is always some sort of pillow fight thrown in there too. As well as some type of riding around on mommy and daddy's backs. It is always a sure fire way to de-stress our entire house. Everyone loves it and is laughing and rolling around on the floor. We've even started getting the baby in on it now that he is a little older. He will often tackle big sis or Daddy, and she loves when he grabs onto her clothes and then pulls away from him and he laughs and laughs every time she "escapes" He's only 5mo. but already so into these types of games. It started when my daughter was really tiny probably about 3mo. and she would latch onto my husbands nose when he was holding her and we called it Baby Monster, my husband would fall over with her and scream argh the baby monster is getting me and from there as her abilities grew it just got more active. I would take her and we would run around the house after Daddy and then pretend to tackle him down, and then when she started to crawl she could do it all on her own.

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The sock game is a great one for getting started if roughhousing makes you uncomfortable. Everyone gets on the floor wearing socks, and you try to keep your own socks on and get everyone else's socks off. You can make up new rules like you tuck stolen socks into your pants or pocket, or you throw them outside the circle.

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I have no idea where this came from, but ours is "Sack o' Potatoes." she runs to a corner of the room (used to be the shower until she slipped and fell . . . Again, not sure why it started with the shower?), and I run and grab her up in the air yelling "sack of potatoes! Sack of potatoes!" Then we throw her in the bed and roll her around yelling "Roll the potatoes! Roll the potatoes!" Then we do tickle, cook, mash, kiss, etc., etc., the potatoes. Whatever we feel like and whatever makes her laugh. It gets pretty physical, and we all love it!

We also do her version of (we call it) WWF where she kind of just crawls around on us and sometimes jumps on or falls on us, whatever she wants/needs to do.

It is a great part of our relationship and I think underscores the other physicalities that are part of our relationship (co-sleeping, extended breastfeeding, etc.). And the mos important part is the amount of belly laugher that just erupts from the situations. We all just love it!